The Offa’s Dyke Association (ODA) is 50 this year! A series of events is planned both at the Offa’s Dyke Centre in Knighton itself and up and down Offa’s and Wat’s Dykes. The ODA would like to hit fifty events to feature on its website and its Twitter feed, to create an online archive to showcase how the communities living alongside these monuments celebrated this milestone anniversary in 2019 and to illustrate the continuing significance of Offa’s and Wat’s Dykes in the twenty-first century.

These events don’t have to take a great deal of planning and can be as simple as a community walk, or a picnic. If you want to be more ambitious and even consider an opportunity for some fundraising that would be wonderful too. All the ODA ask is that you agree to share some pictures of your event that the Association can put on the ODA website and Twitter feed to create an archive for future generations. The ODA are thinking of ‘communities’ in the broadest sense, so schools, special interest groups like heritage societies, walkers and runners are also very welcome to take part.

The ODA are also hoping that this event will help to create a sense of commonality between the individual communities either side of these monuments; to celebrate the unique character of the Anglo-Welsh border both in the past and the present day. 

If you’d like to take part there is a webpage on the ODA site inviting you to email oda@offasdyke.org.uk with an expression of interest in the first instance.

The Offa’s Dyke Association, the Offa’s Dyke Collaboratory, the Clywd-Powys Archaeological Trust and the Community Stewardship of Mercian Monuments (CoSMM) community archaeology project are working together to raise the profile of the Early Medieval landscape archaeology of the Anglo-Welsh border, to preserve its monuments and extend our understanding of them for future generations. Updates on new activities will be featured on each of the websites featured above so do please continue to check back for the latest news.